Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Brandon Lee, Rochelle Davis, Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott
Have I Seen it Before: Yes. Somewhere along the line, Lora became convinced that I hated the film, and I distinctly don’t remember that.
Did I Like It: A movie that is trying to harness (or, really, glom off) the cultural ubiquity that came with Batman (1989) has to have something going for itself. More than a few viewers at the time of the film’s release might point to the film’s art direction and special effects. I’m not so sure that holds up. The special effects strain any credulity now (I can’t imagine they worked all that well in 1994), the editing is frequently so frenetic that it becomes slapdash (at least the movie has a valid excuse), and the sets are all easily identifiable as any backlot ever built. The film was shot in North Carolina, so it wasn’t that same backlot that appears in practically everything that isn’t so lazy as to put the clock tower from Back to the Future (1985), but it does have a blandness to it. Ultimately, that’s more of a virtue than a fault. When you shake off the extreme 90sness, the entire affair has a far closer relationship to the noir films of the 50s it is trying to emulate than either the aforementioned Batman or other imitators like The Shadow (1994).
The real strength of the film is also its greatest tragedy, though. Lee had been puttering around in B martial arts pictures (and, by extension, his father’s shadow) for the first several years of his career, and here he is really letting us know what he can do. He’s sincere, charming, and even funny in a role that might not be giving him much to work with in those arenas. He could have had a truly magnificent career, but it was not meant to be.